She closes her eyes. ‘But he was a good boy too. My best boy. Some nights he’d have tired himself out so much during the day that he’d crawl onto my lap like a cat and just conk straight out. And he never stopped saying I love you, Mummy.’ Her voice breaks a little. ‘One day, he would have, I’m sure. If he’d had the chance to.’

‘I’m so sorry.’

She clears her throat. ‘And I’m sorry to go on. It’s just that there are so few opportunities to talk about him. Alec won’t. And Sheena barely remembers him.’ When she looks at me again, her pale blue eyes are clear, their gaze steady. ‘Lorne isn’t just a wee dead boy. He was a person who deserved to grow up. Who deserved to have a story of his own.’

When I nod, she sits up straighter. ‘So. Ask me what you want about Robert, and I’ll try to answer.’

I think back to that afternoon in Isla’s house and her insistence that the MacDonalds had always thought Robert had something to do with Lorne’s death. But after all that Fiona’s just said, I can’t bring myself to ask. ‘Did you like him?’

‘I think I mostly did. There was something reassuring about him. Noble, maybe. He loved his family. He was good to them.’ She looks across at the sideboard again, and her expression becomes pinched. ‘But you never know, do you? What goes on in people’s lives. Behind closed doors.’

‘What did you think was—’

‘Did Charlie ever tell you about what Robert said he’d done? Back when he was growing up in Ardshader?’

I shake my head. ‘He told me that Robert said he’d done something terrible.’ His guilt was like an anchor that one day dragged him down to the bottom. My heart stutters a little. ‘But that he never told Charlie what it was.’

Fiona narrows her eyes. ‘Well, you’ll have to take that up with Charlie. Because Robert told him, all right. And when Robert died, Charlie told us.’

I try to shrug off my confusion. Try harder to ignore the squeeze of hurt inside my belly. And worse, the curiosity. The bad hope that suddenly makes my heart stutter again. Why would Charlie volunteer a truth, but wrap it in a lie?

‘What did Robert do?’

Some of the hardness goes out of Fiona’s face. ‘Ardshader is – was – a fishing village. Robert’s father ran most of the boats out of that stretch of west coast. Charlie knew him. Had crewed a few early seasons on the Acair before the herring ban.’

‘Wait.’ My heart starts beating so hard I have to curl my hands into fists. ‘Charlie knew Robert’s father?’

I think of Charlie standing on Long Stride Beach all those weeks ago, trying not to look at me when I asked Andrew what? His emphatic He never said. Just Andrew.

‘All fishermen know one another,’ Fiona says with a shrug. ‘In the spring of ’77, when Robert was ten, there was one of those once-in-a-generation Atlantic storms. Sank more than half a dozen island boats. Including the three out of Ardshader. All hands lost.